Utilities that distribute commodities, such as gas, water, or electricity over a commodity distribution network face a perpetual challenge with meter reading, disconnection from, and reconnection to the grid. These three processes consume an average work effort of 90% for a utility's field services department, especially when it comes to residential and commercial accounts which contribute to a lower revenue base and higher maintenance cost.
In order to efficiently bill and collect, utility meters (e.g., water, electricity, gas) need to be read, disconnected, reconnected, maintained, and repaired in an accurate and expedient manner. However, utilities face perpetual challenges with these processes. First, a utility company may deploy field agents to manually perform these processes where these utility meters are located, consuming a great amount of resources. Second, not only is this highly inefficient, some field agents, without proper supervision, may be prone to corrupt practices (e.g., taking bribes for recording inaccurate readings). Third, because utility meters are located in remote locations, they are highly susceptible to tampering and pilfering. This may lead to inaccurate readings, uncompensated utility services, lack of notice of problems to the utility company, other losses and setbacks. Further, it is often difficult for the service person to access the meter for reading, inspection, and maintenance. Therefore, manual meter reading is a highly labor intensive, inefficient, and expensive endeavor.
When access to a meter is not possible, billings are made on the basis of estimated readings. These estimated billings often lead to customer complaints. When meter reading periods are stretched apart by longer periods and the reassessment of actual versus estimated usage involve corrections to the period end bill. Although reducing efforts on the meter reading end, the billing process is made complex, and this complexity may not reduce the possibility of inaccurate billing until the reassessment corrections occur. These and other drawbacks exist with current systems.
The present disclosure provides a system that may be retrofit into existing meter systems (e.g., grid) or installed in new systems that enables cost effective measurement of commodity usage by a consumer. Also described are methods, systems, and meters capable of providing remote networked meter reading and control.